Eleven entire months in the past, a South African scores board indicated that the Baten Kaitos 1 & 2 HD Remaster assortment existed for PC, regardless of 2023’s Bandai Namco solely asserting it for the Nintendo Swap. That is a very long time for a PC launch to be MIA with no different signal it exists, however unexpectedly, whammo, right here we’re—Baten Kaitos 1 & 2 are out on Steam proper now, after being launched on the Nintendo Swap final September.
If there is a option to launch a recreation with much less than zero fanfare, this may be it. There is no signal of the video games on the Steam homepage or perhaps a information article on the Steam web page itself contextualizing the launch. Which is a disgrace, as a result of seeing these video games now obtainable on a platform the place they’re going to be playable for many years to return is a superb factor.
The Baten Kaitos video games are among the many final of a era developed with extremely detailed pre-rendered environments as a substitute of absolutely counting on real-time 3D. There is a lush, painterly high quality to them that few video games evoke even right now, although I am undecided how nicely they maintain as much as fashionable resolutions (upscaling these sorts of detailed 2D graphics can sadly get fairly muddy).
I’ve solely performed just a few hours of the primary Baten Kaitos, however the second recreation, Origins, is a last-of-its-breed traditional, a Japanese RPG with beautiful artwork, an fascinating world and surprisingly well-written and voice acted characters for this style in 2006. It additionally has a crackling battle system: each video games are card battlers, now en vogue however unusual on the time. The place the unique recreation’s battles are a bit stodgy, Origins brings in an arcadey sensibility the place you are taking part in playing cards at a speedy clip and stacking them into killer combos. Origins has movement, one thing Baten Kaitos’s fight did not fairly nail, although it nonetheless provides you some meaty technique and card mechanics to chew on. And hey: they’re each within the assortment, anyway.
As a result of the pair of RPGs had been initially developed by Monolith Smooth for the Nintendo GameCube, which is now owned by Nintendo—and Origins was additionally printed by Nintendo—there was hypothesis final yr that maybe a launch on any platform apart from the Swap was off the desk. I am glad that turned out to not be the case. I’ve had a operating save file of Baten Kaitos Origins loaded up in my Dolphin emulator for years now, returning to it every now and then simply to benefit from the battles. It is nice to see an official launch deliver one other little bit of JRPG historical past to PC, only a few days after the Kingdom Hearts sequence lastly made it to Steam, too.
It does not seem like Baten Kaitos 1 & 2 HD Remaster is Steam Deck verified, however I am certain the sequence’ followers will get it engaged on the Deck earlier than lengthy, regardless.